Law Commons^™

Changemakers Master Of Studies In Law: Adding Depth: Katie Mulvaney, Roger Williams University School Of Law

Life of the Law School (1993- )

No abstract provided.

Campbell At 21/Sony At 31, Jessica D. Litman

Articles

When copyright lawyers gather to discuss fair use, the most common refrain is its alarming expansion. Their distress about fair use’s enlarged footprint seems completely untethered from any appreciation of the remarkable increase in exclusive copyright rights. In the nearly forty years since Congress enacted the 1976 copyright act, the rights of copyright owners have expanded markedly. Copyright owners’ demands for further expansion continue unabated. Meanwhile, they raise strident objections to proposals to add new privileges and exceptions to the statute to shelter non-infringing uses that might be implicated by their expanded rights. Copyright owners have used the resulting uncertainty …

Market Power Without Market Definition, Daniel A. Crane

Articles

Antitrust law has traditionally required proof of market power in most cases and has analyzed market power through a market definition/market share lens. In recent years, this indirect or structural approach to proving market power has come under attack as misguided in practice and intellectually incoherent. If market definition collapses in the courts and antitrust agencies, as it seems poised to do, this will rupture antitrust analysis and create urgent pressures for an alternative approach to proving market power through direct evidence. None of the leading theoretic approaches—such as the Lerner Index or a search for supracompetitive profits—provides a robust …

Formalism And Employer Liability Under Title Vii, Samuel R. Bagenstos

Articles

Most lawyers, law professors, and judges are familiar with two standard critiques of formalism in legal reasoning. One is the unacknowledged-policymaking critique. This critique argues that formalist reasoning purports to be above judicial policymaking but instead simply hides the policy decisions offstage. The other is the false-determinacy critique. This critique observes that formalist reasoning purports to reduce decision costs in the run of cases by sorting cases into defined categories, but argues that instead of going away the difficult questions of application migrate to the choice of the category in which to place a particular case.

The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission And Structural Reform Of The American Workplace, Margo Schlanger, Pauline T. Kim

Articles

In one of its most-watched recent cases, the United States Supreme Court struck down a class action alleging that Wal-Mart stores discriminated against female employees in pay and promotion decisions. The plaintiffs alleged that Wal-Mart’s corporate culture and highly discretionary decision-making practices led to sex discrimination on a company-wide basis, and they sought injunctive relief as well as backpay for individual employees. Reversing the Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, the Supreme Court held in Wal-Mart v. Dukes that the proposed class failed to meet the requirements for class action certification under Rule 23 of the Federal Rules of …

Search Engine Liability For Autocomplete Defamation: Combating The Power Of Suggestion, Michael L. Smith

Faculty Articles

In September 2012, Bettina Wulff, a former first lady of Germany, sued Google for defamation. Mrs. Wulff's complaint arose from Google's autocomplete function: when Mrs. Wulff's name was entered into the search engine, the search engine automatically suggested terms such as "prostitute" and "red light district." Rumors that Mrs. Wulff was a former prostitute dated back to 2006 when she first met Christian Wulff, her eventual husband and president of Germany from 2010 until his resignation in February 2012. Mrs. Wulff denied the truth of these rumors.

Mrs. Wulff contended that these autocomplete results were defamatory and that they caused …

"Controlling" Securities Fraud: Proposed Liability Standards For Controlling Persons Under The 1933 And 1934 Securities Acts, Nancy Staudt

Faculty Working Papers

This Student Note investigates the history and intent underlying the controlling person liability provisions of the 1933 and 1934 Securities Act. It notes that courts have adopted a ranges of standards for holding controlling persons liability, but whichever standard is chosen--that standard is applied to both Acts. This note argues that courts should impose unique liability standards for each statute in order to fully realize Congress' purpose in adopting the laws.

The Effect Of Tort Reform On Tort Case Filings, Patricia W. Moore

Faculty Articles

Does so-called "tort reform" decrease tort case filings? In Texas and other states that have enacted numerous rounds of tort reform, the answer appears to be a resounding "yes," at least as of the year 2000. More recent evidence from Oklahoma supports that conclusion and provides an interesting case study within the tort reform juggernaut.

During at least the past twenty years, tort reformers have achieved substantial legislative successes and, some would argue, public relations victories. Yet their desire for more "reform" seems insatiable, and their legislative agenda rarely sleeps.

Tort reform bills bloom perennially in the Oklahoma legislature, and …

Slides: Dam Building And Removal On The Elwha: A Prototype Of Adaptive Mismanagement And A Tribal Opportunity, William H. Rodgers, Jr.

The Future of Natural Resources Law and Policy (Summer Conference, June 6-8)

Presenter: William H. Rodgers, Jr., Stimson Bullitt Professor of Environmental Law, University of Washington School of Law

77 slides

The State Of Judiciary: A Corporate Perspective, Larry D. Thompson

Scholarly Works

The rule of law depends on highly talented, independent judges who conscientiously strive to ensure that the law is consistently applied in a principled and predictable manner This Essay addresses two potential threats to judicial independence and the rule of law that we believe warrant special attention at this time. First, inadequate judicial salaries pose a threat to the quality and independence of the judiciary. Judges' real pay has declined substantially over the past generation, even as the compensation of other callings within the legal profession has risen dramatically. This growing disparity in pay has prompted an increasing number of …

Managing Punitive Damages: A Role For Mandatory "Limited Generosity" Classes And Anti-Suit Injunctions?, Joan E. Steinman

All Faculty Scholarship

In this Article, I consider whether "limited generosity" classes may be used to determine a defendant's entire liability for punitive damages arising from a defined course of conduct. The goals of such a class action would include adequately punishing and deterring the defendant, keeping the defendant's liability within state-mandated and constitutional limits, and facilitating equitable distribution of the damages among injured plaintiffs. The Article describes the legal limits on punitive damages liability that states have established and that the Supreme Court has held substantive due process to impose, and then carefully examines whether such limits constitute a predicate for mandatory …

Judicial Review Of Fda Preemption Determinations, Amanda Frost

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

No abstract provided.

Form Contracts Under Revised Article 2 (Symposium: Consumer Protection And The Uniform Commercial Code), James J. White

Articles

The current draft of section 2-206 in Revised Article 2 of the Uniform Commercial Code ("UCC") entitled "Consumer Contract: Standard Form"1 presents a unique and threatening challenge to the drafters of consumer form contracts. In earlier drafts, one part of the section applied to both to commercial contracts and consumer contracts. It required that "one manifest assent" to any form contract, commercial or consumer, in order for it to be binding.2 Bowing to commercial opposition in the most recent version, the drafters have omitted all reference to commercial contracts. As the section stands, it applies only to consumer contracts.

Obstacles To The Creation Of A Permanent War Crimes Tribunal, Christopher L. Blakesley

Scholarly Works

Individual liability for war crimes is difficult to enforce and is unlikely to be accepted uniformly by states.

Individual criminal responsibility is the cornerstone of any international war crimes tribunal. Nuremberg Principle I provides that “[a]ny person who commits an act which constitutes a crime under international law is responsible therefor and liable to punishment.” Acts by heads of state or other government officials, even if committed in an official capacity, may not constitute an immunity defense to or mitigate criminality. These officials, therefore, could also be held responsible for offenses committed pursuant to their orders. Additionally, liability for criminal …

Public And Private Options For Evolving Water Organizations, Tim De Young, Duane Brown

Water Organizations in a Changing West (Summer Conference, June 14-16)

45 pages.

The Decline Of The Contract Market Damage Model, James J. White

Articles

In law school every American lawyer learns that the conventional measure of damages for breach of a sales contract is the difference between the contract price and the market price. Even before these rules were embodied in the Uniform Sales Act and the Uniform Commercial Code (UCC), they were a staple of Anglo-American common law. They remain the rules with which a court would determine damage liability not only for the sale of goods, but also for the sale of real estate and securities.

Was Prosser's Folly Also Traynor's? Or Should The Judge's Monument Be Moved To A Firmer Site?, Reed Dickerson

Articles by Maurer Faculty

No abstract provided.

Collective Bargaining And The Antitrust Laws, Theodore J. St. Antoine

Other Publications

A central aim of the antitrust laws is the promotion of competition. A central aim of collective bargaining is the elimination of competition-according to classical trade union theory, the elimination of wage competition among all employees doing the same job in the same industry. Given these disparate aims, the antitrust laws and collective bargaining will almost inevitably tend to clash. To harmonize them, the type of competition which the law is intended to foster must be carefully distinguished from the type of competition which union-employer bargaining can properly displace. The Supreme Court's last major effort to draw the demarcation line …

The Liability Of The Common Carrier As Determined By The Recent Decisions Of The United States Supreme Court, Edwin C. Goddard

Articles

An understanding of the present day liability of the common carrier under conditions as they exist, especially in interstate shipments, is best reached by an historical journey from the early decisions of the Supreme Court of the United States to the end of the year just past.